By Mohammad Gill, Detroit, MI
The fundamentalists want to impose their ‘return to the original roots’ kind of agenda by force on the society and eliminate all opposition by all means. Human life to them is of little value in achieving their goal. Fundamentalism is not restricted to Islam only although whenever fundamentalism is mentioned these days, the picture that it evokes is that of mullahs dressed in long robes with long beards and angry looks on their faces. According to Esposito (The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality,1992), “Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines the term fundamentalism - as ‘a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching. For many liberal or mainstream Christians, fundamentalist is pejorative or derogatory, being applied rather indiscriminately to all those who advocate a literalist biblical position and thus are regarded as static, retrogressive, and extremist.”
In its present application to Islamic fundamentalists, it also connotes violent, ruthless, and tyrannical terrorists who are fatalistic in their actions and beliefs. The worst kind of examples of the living fundamentalists that one can think of are at present Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar.
There are numerous examples of the other kind also, that are equally reprehensible, who decry the terrorist activities of the fundamentalists and are guilty of extreme reductionism. To them, terrorists are not only individuals who are extremists but they are also the complete personification of Islam. For them Osama bin Laden and militant Islam are one and the same entity. It is not Osama, or Omar, who is a terrorist but it is the whole spectrum of Islam, religion and the practitioners, who are blameworthy.
Their pathological reductionism leads them to believe that Osama and his likes are the products of Islam, therefore Islam is necessarily culpable for their activities. They fail to realize that the postulate that “Islam is evil because Osama is evil” is illogical. Therefore a rationalist perforce comes to conclude from such ill-formed propositions that the reductionism of the so-called counter-fundamentalists is as bad and flawed, if not worse, as the terrorists’ misdeeds. Long before the appalling tragedy of September 11, some of the learned scholars of the Christian west had authored erudite books and papers with the enticing and suggestive captions such as “The Roots of the Muslim Rage” (Bernard Lewis, 1990), “Is Islam a Threat?” (Debate between Judith Miller and Leon Hadar, 1993), “God Has Ninety- Nine Names: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Militant Middle East” (Judith Miller, 1996) etc. Commenting on Bernard Lewis’s The Roots of the Muslim Rage, Edward Said (Covering Islam, 1997) wrote: “Whoever designed the magazine’s cover for that issue got Lewis’s point all too well: a glowering, turbaned, obviously Islamic, head stares out at the reader, its pupils showing American flags, its demeanor announcing hate and anger.” Such loaded titles vividly foretell all the skewed stories that are described within the covers of the books.
They do not miss any opportunity of vilifying Islam. They are the prophets of inter-religious hatred and are harmful to the society.
Between these two extremes are the moderates. These are the human beings who believe in moderation and living in peace with other human beings. They are not the dedicated missionaries for spreading their own religious beliefs and imposing them on others; many of them may indeed not believe in any religion, nor do they indulge in irrational reductionism. Such people are called the secular humanists. Other moderates who believe in a religion, do not do so with a mission to make their religion exclusive and worldwide. They practice the best that there is, in their religion. Dale McGowan published on the Secular Web an essay entitled “The American Way: Preferring Violent Failure to non-Violent Victory” on September 26, 2001, in which he proposed a peaceful, non-violent, Gandhian response to the perpetration of the September 11 tragedy. Although many other humanists disagreed with him the point is that he expressed a ‘pacifist’ response to the violent and reprehensible terrorist attack and honestly believed in its efficacy.
The general climate at that time was impassioned and McGowan’s proposal was contrary to what common people were demanding. His was a bold expression of peaceful response to the dastardly acts of the terrorists. Mark Ivan Vuletic posted another essay in a similar vein entitled “With liberty and justice for all” on the Secular Web. In it, Vuletic wrote, “But those who hold the Arab responsible for the crimes of a radical few of the same descent (and it is worthwhile to note that none of the terrorists as yet have turned out to be US citizens, though the point would stand even if all of them were), or lash out at Muslims of all shades for the malevolence of one virulent strand, violate the deepest humanistic principles upon which our country was founded, and for which it stands even today…. Atheists and believers, Christians and Muslims, ethnic Europeans and ethnic Arabs, we must all stand united as Americans. He concluded his essay with the appeal, “I ask you, as the opportunity presents itself, to send out messages of peace and solidarity to the Arab and Muslim communities within America. Let them know that we are with them.” America is my country of choice and I am proud of it. Majority of my countrymen have their sanity intact although they are not as vocal as the few who spew the venom of hatred incessantly. The silent majority needs to stand up and be counted.
Unfortunately the news media is populated with hate mongers. McGowans and Vuletics are seldom allowed time to express their messianic love and fellow feelings, peace and hope, and optimism rather than the fatalistic doom. The upholders of traditional Christianity and Islam have done enough to sow the seeds of hatred against each other; the time has come to let it rest. It is futile to prove that one religion is better than the other, by putting the ‘other’ down. This hasn’t done any good to humanity for the last so many centuries. Let us try to be humans and humanistic.
I would like to end my essay with a verse by an Urdu poet:
Zahid-e-tang nazr ney mujhey kafir jana
Aur kafir yeh samjhata hai Musalmaan hoon mein
Translation:
The narrow sighted Ascetic (Muslim) thought I was an Infidel
And the Infidel believed I was a Musalmaan